


A Dragon’s Hoard

by thatdamnuchiha



Series: Dragons & the Uchiha Who Love Them [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, BAMF Original Female Character(s), BAMF Original Male Character(s), Blood, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Chakra Sensor, Character Death, Character Development, Clans, Dragons, F/M, Fluff, Good Uchiha Madara, Growing Up, Konohagakure | Hidden Leaf Village, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Multi, Namikaze Minato Lives, No Uchiha Massacre, Obsessive Behavior, POV Original Female Character, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Reincarnation, Sentient Earth, Slow Build, Slow Burn, So many OCs, Summons, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Twiceborn, Uchiha Izuna Lives, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Uzumaki Kushina Lives, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23147791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamnuchiha/pseuds/thatdamnuchiha
Summary: There was no Moon Eye Plan as far as she could see, though it would have been more accurate to say Uchiha Madara wouldn’t be enacting it even if Zetsu was somehow pulling strings behind the scenes. Why? Because he was still well and truly loyal to Konoha, even a hundred or so years later, along with the other four who founded the village where she’s to be raised.This wasn’t the world she had read about before her death. It’s not a world which she knows the plot of, nor one she knows how to change to suit her needs. In fact, there’s only one thing she wishes to do: survive. But survival in a world of chakra-wielding warriors is never easy. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down that much quicker. Mediocrity is key, and civilians and non-clan shinobi have that in spades. Too bad she’s neither.She was born into a clan – though it really isn’t one, given how she’s the last surviving member, and the fact no one seems to remember them.After all, they’ve only been dead for a thousand or so years.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Series: Dragons & the Uchiha Who Love Them [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663927
Comments: 15
Kudos: 159
Collections: Down The Rabbit Hole, Of Tales and Tears





	1. Precipice Arc: The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Things to Note:  
> \- This particular work is yet another set in the 'Twiceborn-verse' so be prepared to see the Founders popping up, and surprisingly enough there's a plot point about this fact.  
> \- This is set in Itachi's era, so our MFC is roughly the same age as him, though shockingly enough she doesn't wind up with him. Instead there'll be at least two partners in a relationship with her (and each other), so if you aren't OK with multi relationships, then this is your warning my dears, since our MFC and MMCs aren't monogamous.  
> \- In this fanfiction, there might be a theme of 'With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, and Large Amounts of Death and Destruction if one cannot control it properly'. So there might be heavy psychological issues regarding that kind of thing.  
> \- My update schedule is not set. I write what I want to, when I want to, though I do try to aim to finish all my stories. Mainly because I can't seem to constantly concentrate on one story at a time. Oops.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and happy reading.

Noise.

Someone was wailing, a sound loud enough to make her want to screech at the other – so that was what she did. She opened her mouth and then… Ice in her throat, freezing air inside her lungs and making her gasp for breath – it was cold. Too cold. She hadn’t even noticed how cold it was until the warmth had vanished along with her breath. _Cold. Dark. Alone._ She didn’t even know why she had been left there.

Blindness.

 _She couldn’t see… Was that what death was?_ Or at least she presumed it was death, considering the last memory she had was of dying.

She screamed.

She didn’t like the dark. She never had. It had tormented her baby brother for far too many years, and now it had come for her. _Or maybe there was another reason she couldn’t open her eyes?_ Something which meant things wouldn’t stay the way they were – that she would regain her sight.

Was it hell? No… Hell would have been far more painful for her. Blindness wasn’t her greatest fear. She certainly wasn’t anywhere relieving or joyous… which meant… Purgatory, then. Limbo. The Fields of Asphodel. Or something of that sort. It wasn’t a happy ending, that was for sure. It wasn’t Heaven, nor was it the Elysian Fields, and it most certainly wasn’t the Norse’s ‘Valhalla’. That was for brave warriors who’d died on the battlefield. Somehow she didn’t think falling down the stairs counted. Purgatory or Limbo it was, she reckoned, and she wondered whether she’d be able to move on as the stories told, when she would be able to leave the darkness behind, or if instead she would be stuck there eternally.

A voice reached her in that darkness, feminine and warm. _Soothing,_ she thought, just as something brushed against her skin. It chased away the cold. The darkness still remained though, but it was slightly more bearable than before. The voice soothed some terrified part of her, and in the back of her mind she was unnerved at how familiar it seemed – but the larger part of her was thankful for the soft murmurs which told her she wasn’t alone.

_Maybe death wouldn’t be so bad then?_

The quiet humming started then, and something inside her purred to life as if in greeting. It rumbled like a contented cat, and she found herself being rocked back and forth. Something pressed against her cheek, soft but somewhat scratchy, and the quiet murmurs of the voice joined by a masculine one which crooned at her as the heat around her only grew. It was growing comfier and comfier by the minute, or whatever time measurement there was in death. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but by the time she noticed the voices fading, she was already fast asleep – or whatever dead people actually did instead.

* * *

Blobs of colour. Blurs of blue and white.

Those were what she could make out when her eyes finally relented to her whims. She wasn’t blind anymore, and if that wasn’t a relief and a half, she didn’t know what was. The coldness rarely returned, but on the few occasions it had, the blue blur moved towards her and did something to make it go away. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was, only that she liked it.

The afterlife certainly wasn’t as bad as she had been imagining.

Though she wasn’t all too certain of what she needed to do to obtain more privileges – like her sight which had been returned to her, albeit poorly. Perhaps she just wasn’t meant to see the beauty of the place, or so she mused to herself when she stared up at the fuzzy white sky. It was a flat white, unmoving and unchanging, unless the blue blur lifted her from her confinement.

That usually happened when she had the urge to cry – and she could never seem to stop herself from doing so. Some sort of instinct, or so she presumed. It was embarrassing, yes, but maybe that was just part of what it meant to be dead. She was flying blind – it wasn’t like she had died before, like she knew what to do – so she went with the flow.

But speaking of flow… the sound of rushing water was one she recognised, and that was something she heard a lot. It only grew louder whenever the blue blur carried her away from the fluffy cloud-like mattress upon which she dozed in and out of awareness. The sound was nice, and a welcome change from the humming and the murmuring voices which came from the moving blurs.

She was around water, that much she knew. Other than that, she had no clue. She could only wait for information to reveal itself, no matter how slow it came. She could be patient – she had plenty of time on her hands, thanks to being dead and all.

Sleep came for her quickly after that, like it always did, and she drifted from the blurry world to clearer images. Like the ones before she wound up there.

They were of a familiar clarity, though the content of them was anything but.

She dreamt of _dragons_ of all things. Western ones. Eastern ones. Scales in various shades of blue, glimmering iridescent when the sunlight shone down on them. She was just an observer in those dreams. Watching, never participating.

It was how she had first managed to differentiate between dream and her new reality – well, that and the fuzziness of the images.

Still, it was worth dreaming about them, if only for how mesmerising the dragons were, leaping in and out of the water.

It actually kind of sucked when she woke up.

* * *

Something was wrong.

Something was very _very_ wrong.

She might have been incorrect in all her assumptions, because she was starting to get the overwhelming feeling she wasn’t quite as dead as she had led herself to believe.

The quiet hum in the back of her head was fading, and as the noises went, her sight seemed to come back even sharper. Blue blur became a woman dressed in what looked like a silken blue dressing gown. Her hair was an eggshell blue – so pale it may as well have been white – and her eyes were a bright electric blue which almost seemed to crackle with electricity. She was beautiful, and rather unnerving to her too, thanks to the bone white horns arching from her head. Shaped like crescent moons curved towards her face, two on either side of her head, the inner slightly smaller than the outer.

The lady seemed to like fussing over her, and with that fussing came the warmth of her arms – and the occasional prodding as she checked her over for something – which was how she caught glimpses of tiny arms and tiny toes. Attached to her.

She had a body.

A baby’s body.

It was something she hadn’t expected. She had died a fully grown adult woman, and somehow she doubted she would be stuck in a place like Limbo in a tiny little vessel.

There were also the sights, the scents… the sounds. All were too vivid, too real, to be a dream, leading her thoughts over onto other possibilities.

_Reincarnation._

She was a baby… again. Not that she could remember the first time. Maybe if she could she would have been more sure about what it was that was going on.

But she couldn’t.

So she was left to silently deal with the fact she was a fucking baby.

It explained so much – the inexplicable urge to cry, the sensation of being wrapped in something soft, the inability to control her limbs… and her excretory facilities. The more she thought on it, the more likely it became.

_Fuck._

She had totally been reincarnated, and things most definitely weren’t the same as before. Unless the woman, likely her new mother, was a diehard cosplayer. Maybe that explained the horns. Her parents were just cosplay enthusiasts.

They would get along well with her then.

Her new life would be a blast. It would be the best deal she could have asked for, despite having literally done nothing in her previous life to earn it. She hadn’t been a particularly good person, then again she hadn’t been particularly evil either. She had just lived her life, and now it seemed she was getting a do-over, but with slightly less strict parents. Though the truth of that statement had yet to be decided – she couldn’t even understand the language they spoke. _Perhaps she had been reborn in a foreign country then._

Though in all honesty she had time to figure that out. She had plenty of time.

There was no way she would be running around screaming about _previous lives_ and _ha I’m a reincarnation_. She didn’t particularly want people to doubt her mental faculties, nor accuse her of having dreams of grandeur. That wouldn’t end well.

She wanted to enjoy her second chance at life. Do things differently, like she always had wanted to. It was her blank slate, and she could do whatever she wanted to. _Maybe she’d try being a doctor this time around…_

She had enough time to decide that – it was years in the future.

For now she needed to focus on the present.

But speaking of the present…

A wail burst from her lips as she soiled what must’ve been her hundredth nappy, and internally she screamed. She just needed to survive through toilet training and the like without dying from humiliation. _But, then again, she was a baby. Nobody could really tease her about this shit._ And if they did, she could always elbow them into silence.

There was plenty to look forwards to, once all the drooling, throwing up, excreting without thought, unavoidable naps, and other horrors of being a baby passed.

Time ticked on. Something she couldn’t quite get an accurate measurement on, but colours were growing more vivid, the images growing that much sharper. Sounds became clearer to discern, and she listened to the strange language spoken by the pale-haired woman with interest. Scents hit her nose— _grass, cinnamon, earth_ —and the sensations under her fingers became that much more recognisable. _Familiar._

And one day, she woke from her dreams of dragons to the sight of a whole new world.

* * *

Colours.

Those were the first things she noticed with her new, sharper view of the world – overlaid on what she thought of as _normal_ for sight. They arched around inside the boundary of skin, like a spiderweb of cracks on a wall, flickering in and out of sight as they moved with the person to whom they were attached.

There was a different person there too, when she finally opened her fully-working eyes. Her eyes locked on his, flickering onto the white horns attached to his head. _The same cosplay her mother always wore._ Her father?

He strode towards her then, speaking in the language she couldn’t understand, a gentle smile on his face. He reached down into the crib, his hands gigantic compared to her tiny little body, lifting her with ease. She settled in his arms, letting out a sigh of contentment as the pale electric blue cracks fizzled. Her world jolted, her father walking through the room, his gait as smooth and even as possible. Slightly more than she thought possible, if she were entirely honest.

His footsteps were silent, the electric blue colour sparking there when she peered down and over his arm. But that was when she first noticed the green colour also present. It curled around his feet lovingly and seemed to wiggle under her gaze, as if in greeting to her.

She tilted her head as best she could, spinning back around to peer at her father’s face as his chest rumbled with amusement. His gaze was focused on her, his eyes pools of indigo as they stared down at her searchingly.

_Slitted pupils._

If those weren’t unnerving she didn’t know what was. _Did he wear contacts?_ She sucked on her lower lip. _Her parents were diehard cosplayers. It was decided._ There was nothing else they could be. _Who else would wear such strange contacts around their daughter?_

Swallowing, she reached out for him with grabby hands, tiny little fingers threading through the long pure white locks trailing over his shoulder. It was silky to the touch, and for some reason she absolutely loved threading her clumsy hands through it. She blamed the baby instincts – the same ones that made her cry and make a mess of her nappies.

Her father didn’t seem to mind her wandering hands though, in fact, she would go as far to say that he was enamoured with her tiny, clumsy form. He held her on his lap, sitting down on the armchair tucked in the corner of the room. His arms were wonderfully warm, and rather well-built contrary to those of her previous father’s. _His had practically been sticks._ He had to work out a lot to keep those in shape, she mused, and she wondered what sort of job her parents had. Something outdoorsy, perhaps?

Soft words met her ears, still as indistinguishable as ever, but she found herself babbling at him wordlessly. The sounds were soothing, as was the gentle rocking, and she took the opportunity to look around at her new surroundings. She had always been a bit too curious for her own good, and there was the burning desire to look, _discover_.

Everything was so shiny and new to her, from the tatami mats to the sliding screen doors reminiscent of the Japan she’d known and loved, if only from afar. But there was a strange air to it, something which niggled at the back of her mind, whispering _it’s not the same._ Not what she once knew.

She looked down at herself then, staring at her tiny, pudgy limbs, blinking as she finally spotted her own colour. Spiderweb strands of an icy blue flickered at the very core of her being, not spreading throughout her body unlike the blue and white of her parents. Otherwise it would have been that much harder to spot the tendrils of that same green curling possessively around her own toes. The same green curled around her father’s toes.

 _Mine,_ it whispered, and she shuddered at the sheer _pride_ in its voice – the sense of righteousness, that it was complete in its belief that she was its.

Green curled around her feet, wrapping itself like climbing ivy, and it left her with a promise.

 _Soon,_ it vowed _. Soon._

* * *

She learnt to trace the pale electric blue and the pure white of her parents’ spiderweb of cracks whenever they weren’t in the room. The cracks hummed, each sound different to the other, and she could differentiate each sound from the next – because when she tried to find her parents’ cracks, she could hear a lot more – see a lot more colours as though they were in front of her. She learnt how to tell how far away they were from each other and herself, and it built up a picture in her mind which became that much clearer when she closed her eyes and concentrated. Similar to echolocation, or so she thought upon figuring it out. It was odd how the knowledge of how to do just that was… instinctive, and it only added to her growing thoughts that something was rather strange with her new world.

There hadn’t been cracks before, but now everywhere was full of them. Sometimes it gave her a headache, especially as the distance she could sense her parents from only increased. Still, it gave her something to do while she was stuck in her crib, and she liked knowing where her two most important people were at all times.

She always found she felt more nauseous and worried when she couldn’t find them. Another of her baby instincts, no doubt. A smile curled at her lips. As soon as she began walking she’d be a terror, she knew. Her inquisitiveness knew no bounds, and right now the only things stopping her were the bars of her crib and her inability to move by herself.

Though neither of those things would be miraculously vanishing anytime soon, so she flopped onto her back with a quiet sigh. She was bored. So horribly bored.

Which was how she found entertainment in her own cracks. As long as she could feel the presence of either her parent’s chakra, then she was content to play about with her own icy blue cracks. It wasn’t too hard to get those spiderweb cracks to move about her tiny body. Everything seemingly relied on her intent and motivation. Possibly her imagination too, but there was nothing conclusive to support that idea, so intent and motivation it was – and she had plenty of those. She loved the warmth which surged through her when she moved the icy blue too. It was comforting, and it made her think everything was going to be OK.

But then one day the cracks around her stopped humming, plunging into darkness, and her world was dyed red and white rather than the comforting blue and white she had grown so used to.

Everything wasn’t OK then.


	2. Precipice Arc: The River

The man standing over her crib was unfamiliar, and she squinted up at him. The cracks on him were a bright acrid red colour, which was oddly fitting given how his appearance was the furthest thing from her parents. His hair was pitch black, matching the horns he too wore. _Was everyone there into cosplay?_ A shudder rolled down her spine, as she stared at the spiderwebs of cracks which flickered in and out of existence inside the sharp implements on either side of his head.

She shivered, staring up into those burgundy red eyes, mewling quietly as those black slitted pupils locked on her tiny form. She didn’t want him looking at her. He felt wrong. So very wrong.

She screamed, wailing loudly, begging for her mother or her father to come back and save her from the scary man.

Somebody listened.

Her father’s voice reverberated around the room, the unfamiliar syllables making her cries stopped as she saw the electric blue cracks she knew all too well. A gurgle escaped her lips, tiny limbs relaxing too soon as the red man was tackled to the ground. Her father shouted something, urgency and fear lining his tone, and she sorely wished she could understand the language if only so she could understand what was happening.

Suddenly, her mother was there too, tears and streaks of crusted red lining her face. She was jostled out of her crib in an instant and scooped up into those familiar warm arms. She stared up at the ceiling, a cry escaping her when the dull white became a bright blue dotted with white patches here and there. The sky, she realised, before her wandering attention turned back onto her mother.

They were running somewhere. Where, she knew not. Only that the white cracks of her mother were moving erratically. _Fear._ Something bad was happening – it was why all the cracks had gone dark. Why they had stopped singing. She sucked in a breath, reaching up for the pale locks of her mother, seeking comfort there as she cried as quietly as she could.

“Shh,” her mother whispered, the soft shushing noise the only thing she could really understand. The words were probably meant to comfort her, and perhaps, had she been an actual child, they might have worked. But she was an adult through and through. She knew too many possibilities of what was going on. Especially with how the cracks had vanished, rather than slipping down to just a whisper.

Dead.

The people those cracks belonged to were well and truly dead. _And the red man was probably behind it in some manner._ Not that she could do anything about him. She was a baby – hence why her mother was likely escaping with her. Or so she hoped.

She clutched at her mother’s hair all the tighter, wailing when she found herself being set down. _Why was she being set down,_ she wanted to know. Frantic, she looked around, staring at the wicker container she was being placed in the middle of – atop a blanket, a little teddy being pressed into her hands which were still latched onto her mother’s hair as she leant over her. Words she still couldn’t understand were whispered to her, and she desperately tried to memorise them, engraving them as best she could into her undersized brain.

_Because it sounded like a goodbye._

Sobs escaped her at the thought, and she clung to the braid in her mother’s hair, barely realising it was cut off until both ends were tied, and the locks of eggshell blue hair were gifted to her. Her cries reached fever pitch, hands scrabbling to grab onto something of her mother. She didn’t want to be separated.

There was nothing she could do to stop her mother though, as she picked up the baby carrier she had seemingly been placed into, leaning over to place it down over the edge of the veranda they had stopped on. Only it wasn’t a veranda. It was a mooring platform.

She was in a basket.

A baby basket, which had apparently been designed to float. _Where was the sense in that?_ She wanted to cry. Why was she being thrown out into the middle of a lake? Or some other body of water?

Pulling herself up to a seated position, she scrambled to reach for her mother. She didn’t want to be left alone, left to die in the middle of a lake. The basket wobbled dangerously, almost threatening to tip, and she looked towards her mother, waiting for her to reach down and stabilise her carrier – but something else did instead. Water rose, cracks of green flickering about inside it. _The same green which curled about her feet._ It steadied the rocking of her basket, and she could only whimper as the waters pulled her away from her mother.

“Sayonara,” her mother whispered, tears leaking down her face as she knelt on the edge of the jetty and _being the utter anime nerd she was she recognised that word spoken._

 _Goodbye_. Her mother was saying goodbye. It was the final nail in the coffin, the last piece of evidence she needed to know her mother was sending her away somehow, and her cries started back up as she realised _her mother was leaving her._ Her pudgy hands reached out, and she sobbed at the loss of the only two people she had ever known in her strange new world.

Light glinted off metal, catching her eye as her mother lifted the object to her throat – a knife, she realised belatedly as sounds of movement came from beyond the little pier her mother had taken them to. Screaming as she realised what was about to happen – what her mother was about to do – she wished she could _talk_ wished she could _scream_ at her to _stop_. But she was too small, so she could only watch as red gushed out, dribbling down into the waters.

Her mother was bleeding. _Her mother was dying._ The familiar cracks were fading. Green cracks surged along the water though, flickering brightly where her mother’s blood filled the water.

Feet skidded to a stop on the jetty, harsh sounding words filling the air, and she could once again only watch as fingers pointed at her. _But they couldn’t reach her from there, she knew._ Or she thought she did.

There were two of them, both male from what she could tell – though she was more guessing from the short hair and the seeming lack of chest development. They could have been short-haired, flat chested women for all she knew. But the fact was they were _standing_ on the water, taking a few cautious steps before they ran towards her.

Metal glinted once more in the light, and she cried that much harder when she saw the blood rolling down their weapons. She could _taste_ the intent in the air. They were meaning to kill her. A small innocent baby to the rest of the world. _Unless she was in some sort of weird fantasy world where they could read minds, but that would be bizarre._

Almost as bizarre as the fact people were walking on water.

The fact remained though – she couldn’t do anything. She hadn’t even had the chance to properly live yet in that strange new world where everyone seemed to have horns. _And she didn’t think they were fake anymore._

Clutching her teddy to her chest, she whimpered, beyond terrified and _so_ confused as to what exactly was going on. _She didn’t want to die again._ Dying hurt. _And she was so small now._ She had so much more left to live for.

Green cracks hummed in the waters around her as if in response, the surface of the once still lake rippling – and her would-be murderers froze where they stood for a split second. That split second was all it took.

And then something large broke from under the surface, and her world turned dark almost instantly – but not the unconscious kind. Something had blocked the light of the sun from reaching her. Dampness hung in the air, and she shivered, wondering what was going to become of her now that she was seemingly protected.

The answer came in the form of light emanating from the basket underneath her, and she had a single, brief instant to take in the _blue blue_ scales of the body looping over and around her before the light became bright enough to blind her.

* * *

The sounds of water sloshing, and wind wailing greeted her when she woke up. Blinking rapidly, she took in the sky above her, and how different it was to the one she had been under before. It was darker for one. Not to mention she couldn’t quite enjoy it as much thanks to how quickly she was now moving.

Sitting up, she peered around her, feeling slightly nauseous as the rough river waters jostled her about. _But the green cracks kept them from toppling her basket over._ They protected her. They always had, she realised, glancing down at them in wonder. _Where did they come from?_ Though she didn’t get to ponder them for long.

Her stomach rumbled, and then she was crying. _Loudly._

 _What now?_ she wanted to know. The scary people were gone, but so were the only two other people she’d ever known. She was a _child,_ a baby, in that world and she couldn’t survive on her own just yet. _Silently she vowed to learn how to be independent and strong as soon as possible._ It was scary, being all alone in a big, terrifyingly confusing new world. _How had those people stood on the water?_ Something was different to the world she had known before.

She had known it all along.

Her throat felt hoarse, and she cried all the harder, dimly knowing it was only those cries which would allow someone to find her. If there was any form of civilisation in that strange place. Forest surrounded the banks of the river on either side, and she flopped back in her blankets, praying someone would come by the river. _Praying that they would be kind enough to find her and bring her somewhere relatively safe._ She didn’t want to die again.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, crying and listlessly staring up between the woven basket roof sheltering her upper half and the blue sky beyond. _Blue like the scales from before._ She wondered what had saved her – what had protected her. _A snake?_ Or perhaps some other form of reptile.

The sounds of yelling brought her out of her daze, a sudden halted motion of her carrier making her cries taper off for a single second – a face peering down at her for few moments before she started crying again. _Because her nappy was a mess, she was hungry, her throat felt like a desert, and her mother was dead._

Whoever was peering down at her looked just as confused as she felt about the events of the day. They called out in that same language as her mother, and suddenly there were two more faces staring down at her as she lay on her blankets. One of them, the one with longer hair, cooed down at her, saying something she still couldn’t understand to the others. _If she was in a world of superpowers or something she would kill for language comprehension right then and there –_ but something told her she was going to have to learn the manual, hard way. There was little she could do about it though.

Jostling alerted her to the fact she had been lifted from the waters _and the nice green cracks which had cared for her there._ Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled herself to a seated position, peering closely at her saviours. Their cracks were thin, narrow, and all a dull greenish colour, though the shade varied between them. _Like snot,_ her mind added, and her own nose wrinkled at the thought.

But then again she was a small snotty little baby. She flopped back on her blankets with a sigh, nerves chewing at her tiny little stomach as she worried about _where_ exactly she was being taken. Though she didn’t really have any control over it thanks to the whole _I’m-a-baby-yay_ situation.

Eventually, she got her answer in the form of a little camp, her cries long since having dried up despite the rumbling in her stomach. The long haired one ran up to the two figures waiting there, calling a confusing jumble of words – one of them being _sensei_. Gumming on her lip, she stared between her two new minders, finally noting how _young_ they looked. They seemed like they should still be in school—

She tilted her head. _Was it a field trip?_

Staring off into space was called off though, as the two _adults_ finally moved. A fire was crackling in the clearing, the light from the sky fading, so she had to squint up at the pair – red and bright blue cracks – to get an idea of what they looked like. _One had white hair, just like her father._ Cries broke free from her lips then, and she found herself being lifted from her makeshift crib, her teddy falling from her hands and onto the blankets as she was snuggled into a warm chest. Still wailing, she peered up, blinking up at the dark black eyes peering down into her own. The other, the white one, had soon vanished. _In fact, now that she thought about it, he’d vanished really quickly._ She was left alone with the black-haired one, who’s slightly spiky hair fell long like both her father’s and her mother’s had. _But the texture and colouring was all wrong_ – as she soon found out by threading her hands into the soft black locks. It wasn’t silky enough, she decided right then and there, but it would keep her occupied.

She crammed a handful of hair into her mouth, slobbering all over it in an attempt to stop her cries and keep herself from noticing the gnawing in her stomach and the heavy feeling of her nappy. _Silently she apologised to the poor person who’s hair she was ruining._ She didn’t even know their name.

But they were being nice. _They hadn’t thrown her into the fire._ Instead she was being cradled by it, warm, muscled arms _so much like her father’s_ cuddling her – keeping her warm. She was safe now.

Even if she was starving and in the middle of nowhere without a clean change of underwear.


	3. Precipice Arc: The Journey

She gummed on the hair of Red, as she was calling him internally – thanks to those bright red cracks he sported. She still wondered what they were exactly, but like all things they would seemingly have to wait until she grew up and learnt to speak the language there. _Which was going to be especially hard._ How was one supposed to learn a language from scratch? Dimly, she vaguely recalled reading an article on child language acquisition, but she was flying blind there.

Alone.

Sobs burst from her lips, saliva coated hair being swiftly pulled from her mouth, and a small part of her felt vindictive glee as she spotted the exasperation on the man’s face. Though it was closely followed by coos at all her baby adorableness.

She wanted familiarity. She wanted her mother back. She wanted her father back. She wanted to go back to the peaceful times before the red man. _Red was nicer than the red man though,_ she decided. He let her chew on his hair with her toothless gums with a sort of exasperated fondness.

 _Clearly he had taken care of plenty of children previously – or maybe he just loved kids and was good at dealing with them._ The answers would probably come when she was older – and that meant she had to learn to be patient. There was nothing else to do.

_She had no understanding of the language, after all._

Something cold and rubbery cut off her cries, and she blinked as she found herself suckling on it instinctively. A reaction she couldn’t stop, suckling noises escaping her as she slobbered over the rubbery construction. _A dummy… or was it called a pacifier there?_ Not that it really mattered. They were both the same thing, even if the terminology was slightly different.

Tears clouded her vision as she peered up, and she blinked again as blue cracks reappeared along with the white-haired man. Just the sight of that white hair brought a surge of longing to her chest, and she suckled on the dummy even as more tears leaked out of her eyes. Red said something then, his eyes kept on her own, and then she found a familiar dragon teddy being waved around in front of her. Her arms lashed out, grabbing a hold of one of her precious few links back to her homeland. _Wherever the hell that was…_

She didn’t know where that was, nor where she currently was.

After all, she was fairly certain her last memories of her homeland were to do with people trying to kill her. Scary people, with dark horns so different to the crescent-shaped pale ones her parents had donned.

* * *

Drifting in and out of consciousness was becoming far too common for her, but kids needed their sleep. Whether she liked it or not, she now was one again, and with that came natural instincts like ones to fall asleep, or ones to grab onto anything in the nearby vicinity, or ones to suckle whether it be a dummy or on the bottle of milk which had been procured from the white one. _Occasionally a finger too._ And usually she didn’t notice the fact she was doing just that until she’d been doing it for what had to be at least five minutes.

The disgusted face she pulled when pushing the hands away usually earned a chuckle or a retort from whoever was unfortunate enough to have their fingers drooled on. Fortunately or not, she usually had her dummy in place soon after those incidents, which reduced the trauma somewhat.

Red and White were usually fairly agreeable. In fact, they seemed to be alarmingly relaxed and patient when it came to dealing with her. They were good adults, she decided right then and there, and she hoped she grew up to have hair as pretty as both of theirs seemed to be.

Yawning, she stretched out her body as best as her clumsy new form would allow her, wondering when exactly they would manage to reach civilisation of some sort. They had seemingly been fine with taking care of her there in the forest rather than finding the nearest social services and foisting her off onto them. Frowning, she tried to think on things – a dangerous thing to do with her underdeveloped body. It made her sleepy. So very sleepy. But she at least wanted to have something to do while she could only really roll around in someone’s arms.

 _She didn’t even know their name._ Silently, she shrugged as best she could. Red and White would have to do. Besides, it wasn’t like they knew she called them that, unless they were mind readers or something like that. That wouldn’t be cool though. She liked her thoughts being private. Given how they were babying her, she assumed her mind was still relatively safe. It was a world of strange powers she decided then and there. _Maybe magic existed there?_

That was an exciting thought. Giggling, she waved her hands around, wanting to do something. _Wanting to find her own magic. Wanting to get her own horns._ Unless they had been some sort of decorative prop. But if the place she was in was indeed a land of fantasy and magic, then maybe they were the traits of some humanoid race.

* * *

She dreamt of dragons again, soaring above a lake, scales glistening in the sunlight as they swooped around a range of mountains. The rock changed then, from a dark, deep grey, to a glistening white as they flew lower to the sparkling blue waters. It was then that she saw their destination – a group of white spires, almost glowing as the light reflected off the beautiful rock they had been made from. Those spires were attached to the palace. A building with what looked to be carved runic markings inlaid around the various openings.

Green cracks hummed then, wrapping up around the base of the foundations, curling lovingly around pillars and staircases like creeping vines of ivy. Tilting her head, she glanced down at her feet, watching as the same green cracks curling around her own toes.

 _Come back soon,_ it whispered, and her eyes snapped open in the next second, much to the apparent delight of Red who still held her.

Only something was different about the air around them. It buzzed in what she soon realised to be anticipation. The green cracks curled around her feet flickered in excitement, almost tickling her with their enthusiasm. Giggling with an odd glee, she found herself content with playing with Red. White hovered nearby, as did an increasing gaggle of big kids. They were separated into groups of three, much like the group of children who’d found her in the river.

Definitely a class exercise of some sort, or so she mused, nodding as best she could as Red stood all of a sudden. The swish of his inky black hair had her turning her gaze to what Red was doing. He was looking over his shoulder, and she could just about see the bright grin stretching across his face as he called out – to _somebody_ she realised as two others stepped out of the treeline.

Conversation buzzed in the clearing, and she could only blink as she spotted more big kids appearing from the forest. _Following the other two people the same age as Red and White._ Slumping into Red’s shoulder, she watched their approach, suckling on her dummy all the while. _It was better than trying to slobber on his hair, plus the action was oddly soothing to her –_ the suckling that was. _Probably because it was a natural instinct._

Huffing at the thought, her fingers curled into Red’s shirt, pulling slightly at the high collar. _It looked cosy,_ that was for sure. Her grip tightened when curious dark eyes turned her way, and she looked on curiously at the muddy brown cracks tinged with threads of a metallic blue and green, before turning to look curiously at the dark purple cracks belonging to the man with long spiky black hair. It was a bluish black, and it was even more spiky and wild than Red’s own hair.

Curious, she looked between Red and Purple – as the new one had been dubbed – suckling quietly on her dummy as she took in the similarities between the pair of them. She was fairly sure they had the same noses and similar eye shapes. Red had prettier eyelashes though, she decided right then and there. But they were siblings, that was for sure.

Though she was glad she had encountered Red first, if the look on Purple’s face was any indication. He was, after all, staring at her like she was some sort of alien lifeform. A pale finger lifted then, poking at her cheek with something akin to curiosity. She grabbed a hold of it, as babies and toddlers were wont to do.

Red chuckled then, speaking to her in soft tones, and she sorely wished she could flip a switch and understand the words he was saying to her. _But if she was in a world of magic, it certainly wasn’t helping her with language comprehension._

Mud appeared in view then, looming over her like a grinning storm cloud, and she blinked as a conversation then took place over her head. She itched to understand, to learn about that strange new world she seemed to have landed in – and with any luck she would soon be headed back to civilisation, what with how they were collecting their things and attempting to corral the large group of big children somewhere.

White collected her basket then, holding up the plush dragon teddy which she made grabby hands for. The familiar, comforting object was in her hands, and she wasted no time in pressing it up against her face and breathing in the scent which was slowly disappearing. _The scent of her once home._ The place she should have been raised. The place she would have been raised if it hadn’t been for those people with the dark horns with hair to match.

Frowning into her teddy, she could only watch as Red adjusted his hold on her then – and then they were off. _Quickly too!_ She blinked, a whimper escaping her, even as swaddled in blankets as she was carried up into the treeline. They were moving faster than humanly possible, and Red’s gait was smooth. Unnaturally so. She was barely jolted in the slightest.

 _Magic? Superpowers?_ Her imagination ran wild with the possibilities.

Purple ran beside him, with White and Mud somewhere she couldn’t see. She could still feel the humming of their cracks though, which meant they were nearby. Mud and Purple’s cracks were very loud for some reason. _Stronger._ Mulling over that thought, she snuggled into Red’s shirt, keeping a tight grip on her teddy, despite it being tucked in the blankets which had evidently been wrapped around her for the preparation of the journey they were making. The wind was quite biting, and being a bitty baby, she was that much more vulnerable to it.

_Especially without her mother there to take care of her._

Sadness ran through her then, small sniffles barely audible over the howling wind as they hurried through the treetops. For how long, she didn’t know. Her mind wasn’t the best with keeping track of that – what with how she occasionally fell asleep at the most inopportune moments. She was trapped in a baby’s body though, and that couldn’t be helped.

Their destination soon became apparent though. After all, even with her puny little brain and attention span, it was fairly hard to miss the wide, large gates which towered over them. A frown marred her face then. _Because it tickled at her memories for some reason._

Red cooed down at her then, Purple barking something at him sharply as they wandered over to a guard station of sorts. Or was it a tourist information desk? She tilted her head, still snuggling her dragon teddy tightly. _What was going to happen to her next?_

Fear stole through her.

Because she had no idea.

She was stuck in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar body, with unfamiliar people, in a world of unfamiliar powers. The reality of that fact was slowly slipping in, the gratitude and happiness of being rescued from certain death fading, replaced instead by confusion, fear, and a burning thirst for information.

**Author's Note:**

> SPORADIC UPDATES
> 
> In case you haven't noticed, I'm the terrible kind of person who loves to jump between fanfictions, so my update schedule for everything can be pretty horrific - though on the upside, I do have a determination to finish everything I write (aside from very few fanfictions which I decide need complete rewrites, which I suppose is finishing them in another way).


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